Navigating Personal and Sociopolitical Tensions in Students’ Engagements with Food Access Data

• In Event: Data Science as a Tool for Engaging in Civic Education

Abstract

Within K-12 educational contexts, social studies is a promising space to cultivate students’ critical data literacy skills, but it remains an underexamined disciplinary context (e.g., Lisinker et al., 2025; Shreiner & Guzdial, 2022). Critical data literacy goes beyond an individual’s ability to ask questions, gather and analyze data, and interpret and visualize results of their inquiries to include the social, political, and ethical dimensions of data (Bargagliotti et al., 2020; Louie, 2022). Social studies standards like the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards, already ask students to interpret and produce a variety of data visualizations like timelines, maps, and graphs, but research shows that teachers don’t explicitly teach data literacy skills and students often struggle to make sense of visualizations (e.g., Shreiner, 2018). At the same time, the C3 Framework emphasizes students taking action based on findings from their inquiry. To develop students’ capacity towards civic participation, students must connect larger sociopolitical struggles to their own lives and have a sense of agency (e.g., Rap et al., 2022). However, tensions can exist between student agency and connection to data and sociopolitical realities. We draw on a humanistic stance to data science education (Lee et al., 2021) to unpack the tensions between the personal and sociopolitical layers of engagement with data practices for students in a sixth-grade social studies class.

We designed a middle school social studies unit to teach students about the continuing importance of treaties for Indigenous peoples in their state through the lens of food sovereignty. This unit was implemented by a sixth-grade social studies teacher at a rural middle school in a western state over four weeks in Fall 2023 (two classes, 64 students). In the unit, students engaged in two projects intended to connect the personal and sociopolitical realms in relation to food access. Students tracked their food consumption for one week and examined data trends across the sixth grade. Students also made food access maps using paper circuit materials to visualize food access on reservations and in their own communities. Finally, students created plans to address food access in the communities they studied.

To investigate tensions between the personal and sociopolitical layers of data science, we thematically analyzed (Braun & Clarke, 2012) teacher and student reflective interviews and classroom artifacts (food tracker, food access maps, and community action plans). We found tensions between supporting student agency and deepening understanding of the sociopolitical nature of food access data. For instance, in identifying areas with and without food access, students identified patterns, especially comparing reservations with their local community. However, the focus on reservations unintentionally supported a deficit mindset about the lack of food access there. Further, students felt empowered in addressing real-world problems, but their solutions to food access issues often ignored Indigenous community efforts. This work contributes to our growing understanding of how to integrate data science education into disciplinary contexts, illuminating a problem of practice in supporting students’ interaction with data across personal, cultural, and sociopolitical dimensions.

Authors

• Kristin A. Searle, Utah State University

• Deborah Fields, Utah State University

• Mengying Jiang, Utah State University

• Bolaji R Bamidele, Utah State University

• Michaela Harper, Utah State University

• Waqas Ahmad, Utah State University

• Emma Griffin, Utah State University